Saturday, October 24, 2015

“[F]or the rest of us Krispy Kreme represents the siren call of diabetes, obesity, clogged hearts, and death - we can only hope a death that takes place in the Krispy Kreme Challenge Children’s Specialty Clinic, which I’m sure is a very good hospital with some now very terrible branding.”

(I first read the quote in this article about the Israeli government’s efforts to use the secretive trade pact – among other means - to suppress BDS and other transnational solidarity and human rights actions.)

Thursday, October 15, 2015

“We offer this statement first and foremost to Palestinians, whose suffering does not go unnoticed and whose resistance and resilience under racism and colonialism inspires us. It is to Palestinians, as well as the Israeli and US governments, that we declare our commitment to working through cultural, economic, and political means to ensure Palestinian liberation at the same time as we work towards our own. We encourage activists to use this statement to advance solidarity with Palestine and we also pressure our own Black political figures to finally take action on this issue. As we continue these transnational conversations and interactions, we aim to sharpen our practice of joint struggle against capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, and the various racisms embedded in and around our societies.”

Tuesday, October 13, 2015

“It would seem that the amount of destructiveness to be found in individuals is proportionate to the amount to which expansiveness of life is curtailed. By this we do not refer to individual frustrations of this or that instinctive desire but to the thwarting of the whole of life, the blockage of spontaneity of the growth and expression of man’s [sic] sensuous, emotional, and intellectual capacities…. In other words: the drive for life and the drive for destruction are not mutually independent factors but are in a reversed interdependence. The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life. Those individual and social conditions which make for suppression of life produce the passion for destruction that forms, so to speak, the reservoir from which the particular hostile tendencies – either against others or against oneself – are nourished.”

“The tactics used to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights frequently follow recognizable patterns. Activists and their protected speech are routinely maligned as uncivil, divisive, antisemitic, or supportive of terrorism. Institutional actors—primarily in response to pressure from Israel advocacy groups—erect bureaucratic barriers that thwart efforts to discuss abuses of Palestinian rights and occasionally even cancel events or programs altogether. Sometimes the consequences are more severe: universities suspend student groups, deny tenure to faculty, or fire them outright in response to their criticism of Israel. Meritless lawsuits and legal threats, which come from a variety of Israel advocacy groups identified in this Report, burden Palestinian rights advocacy and chill speech even when dismissed by the courts. Campaigns by such groups have even resulted in legislation to curtail Palestine advocacy, criminal investigations, and filing of charges against activists.”

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

“The Kurds are alive to the paradox that this experiment in “government by the people” has become possible only amid the violent rupture of war. But there is a darker irony, too.

Democracy was supposed to be the point of Western intervention in the Middle East. But in Rojava, where it is cherished and has prospered despite the most vicious of opponents, this brave experiment is being quietly starved while the supposed champions of democracy stand by.”

There’s no paradox, no irony. Understanding the cultural, religious, and geopolitical reality of “Western intervention” allows us to dispense with these obfuscating terms.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

“‘Kissinger’s official biographer’, writes the man Kissinger first asked to be his official biographer, ‘certainly gives the reader enough evidence to conclude that Henry Kissinger is one of the greatest Americans in the history of the republic,…’”